Articles authored by Sonu Varghese

There’s been valid concern that employment conditions are deteriorating, ever so slowly. The unemployment rate has increased from a low of 3.4% in April 2023 to 4.3% in July of this year. Hiring also seems to have pulled back a lot, with the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) telling us that the hiring …

Chinese stocks have melted up over the past week, with Mainland China’s main index, the CSI 300, surging a whopping 25% since September 23rd (through the 30th). Just on Monday (September 30th), the index surged 8.5%, taking it to the highest level since August 2023. China’s markets will be closed for the rest of the …

We just got a slew of economic data revisions from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and my first response was, Wow! A lot of this is backward-looking data, but it’s important to (re) level-set where we are, and the momentum associated with that. As my colleague Barry Gilbert said to me after these revisions, …

Here’s the Real Dry Powder That Matters There’s been a lot of questions about the $6 trillion sitting in money market funds (MMF), and what’s going to happen to it as interest rates drop. Ben Carlson, Director of Institutional Asset Management at Ritholz Wealth Management, who pens the “Wealth of Common Sense” blog, wrote a …

Last week was all about the Federal Reserve (Fed) jump-starting the rate cut cycle with a 0.5%-point cut. But amidst all the commentary around that, it’s easy to forget about what ultimately drives equities: profits. Note that what the Fed did was important even from this perspective. A Fed that is looking to cap the …

Stocks reacted in a fairly neutral way after the Federal Reserve’s historically significant decision to jumpstart the rate cutting cycle with a 0.5%-point cut. But the real follow-through came on the day after the Fed meeting, perhaps after everyone slept on it. The S&P 500 surged 1.7% to close at a new record high on …

Say goodbye to those 5.5% rates! The Federal Reserve (Fed) jump-started their policy pivot by going big at their September meeting, cutting interest rates by 0.50%-points, taking the federal funds rate to the 4.75-5.50% range. This was not entirely unexpected. Traders put the probability of a 0.5%-point move at 63% just prior to the meeting, …

Last week I argued that the Federal Reserve (Fed) needs to “go big” sooner rather than later by starting their rate cut cycle in September with a 0.5%-point cut. Labor market risks are rising, and the August payroll data wasn’t really comforting from that standpoint. At the same time, the latest inflation data showed that …

We’ve consistently said for several months now that inflation was last year’s problem. The latest consumer price index (CPI) data confirms this. Headline CPI is up 2.5% year over year (y/y) through August, which is the slowest pace in three and half years. Here’s some perspective on how far we’ve come: A year ago (August …

The August payroll report was kind of ok on the face of it. Payrolls grew by 142,000 in August, below expectations for a 165,000 increase but these things are noisy. The unemployment rate also declined from 4.3% to 4.2%, which is welcome. However, read one step beyond headlines and it’s fairly clear the labor market …